EEJ 9 (4) (2019) 509 – 516 English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej The Alignment of and Gaps between the Needs Analysis, the 2013 Curriculum and Classroom Practice of CLT Approach Anisa Dian Kusumawardani 1, Abdurrachman Faridi2 1. SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang, Indonesia 2. Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia Article Info ________________ Article History: Recived 20 June 2019 Accepted 2 August 2019 Published 23 December 2019 ________________ Keywords: Needs analysis, 2013 Curriculum, CLT, alignment, gaps ____________________ Abstract In designing and evaluating a curriculum, need analysis is the prior action so that it can accommodate students‟ need and the result is not disappointing. The dissatisfaction toward graduate students from vocational high school who most of them do not have adequate English skill to work can be assumed that the curriculum as well as the learning process do not consider the students‟ needs. This study aimed to investigate the vocational high school students‟ needs and its alignment of and gap toward the 2013 Curriculum and the practice of CLT approach. This research is qualitative descriptive research which was conducted at SMK Negeri 1 Semarang toward the students and the teacher. The data were collected by using questionnaire, observation checklist, document analysis guideline and interviews.The result of this study shows the students‟ opinion, demand, and reflection toward the English learning process. Meanwhile on the investigation of the teaching learning, it is found that the implementation of the 2013 Curriculum more or less has been accordance with the regulation, on the contrary the CLT approach had not been applied well. The alignments of the needs analysis, the curriculum and the CLT approach lay on the sufficient time allotment of the English subject, the learning activity, promoting active learning, and promoting English usage during the learning process. Meanwhile the gaps between the needs analysis, the curriculum and the CLT approach occur in the lack of productive skill practice, authentic learning media, and the discipline-related learning material. © 2019 Universitas Negeri Semarang Correspondence Address: Jl. Menoreh Utara IX No.57, Sampangan, Kec. Gajahmungkur, Kota Semarang, Jawa Tengah 50232 E-mail: anisadiian@gmail.com p-ISSN 2087-0108 e-ISSN 2502-4566 Anisa Dian Kusumawardani, Abdurrachman Faridi/ EEJ 9 (4) (2019) 509 – 516 510 INTRODUCTION Needs analysis which is the initial process in designing a course provides information on the target, the demands and the lacks. This prior step can be conducted toward several parties in the education field such as students, teachers, alumni and the stakeholders. The one which is conducted toward students is the most important one as they are the object of the education. Students‟ needs analysis can be used to evaluate a course or a curriculum. It reveals the target of learning, students‟ learning experiences, students‟ weaknesses, and students‟ expectation. By obtaining the analysis, we can see how well the curriculum or the course accommodates the demands. There have been a lot of studies on the needs analysis conducted in college level as well as on the secondary level. The results of those studies reveal that the improvement of communicative skills such as speaking and listening skill is the demanding one. It is also found that the high demand is caused by the lack of communicating in English in the daily life. It is also related to the fact that the learning process is lack of interactive activities (Todea&Demarcsek, 2017;Yang, 2018; Zurniati&Kustati ,2015).Although the needs analysis has been conducted in either college or secondary level, the information on the needs of vocational high school students can be called as limited. Thus, the detail information of vocational high school students toward English subject is recommended by Ayuningtyas (2015). The limited information on the needs analysis of secondary school students causes several uncomfortable effects related to the recent curriculum, the 2013 Curriculum. Although the curriculum points out the balance of both hard skill and soft skill (Ashar&Irnawati, 2016), it is still claimed that it does not support the main goal of the vocational school that is preparing the students to master the skills which will be used in work life. In term of English, the students‟ proficiency cannot be said as satisfying, it still needs long road to achieve it. This is also related to the process of learning. Students of vocational high school will need more practical English such as adequate listening and speaking skill as it will be used directly at the spot. Furthermore, they also need to have sufficient understanding toward vocabulary and terms which related to their discipline. It will be used when they read the manual of certain instruction. Thus they need to be exposed to English as much as they need to. They also need an effective and intensive environment to practice and communicate using English. In other words they need to be active during their learning process (Astuti & Lammers, 2017) as what is expected by the Communicative Language Teaching approach which has been claimed to be adopted by the curriculum in Indonesia in English subject. CLT approach is considered as an effective approach to teach English for foreign language as it requires students‟ active participation in using English to communicate during the learning activities (Mustapha &Yahaya, 2012). As the learners intensively communicate using English, they eventually use their listening, speaking, reading and writing in integrated way. Of course, errors and mistakes occur during their learning interaction, which enable them to learn directly. This intensive learning cannot be put aside with the existence of authentic material in which the learners learn how to use the expression in their statements in correct way (Breshneh, 2014; Richard & Rodger, 2014). From the explanation above, we assume that the vocational high school students‟ competence lacking in term of English skill which makes them be ready in their work life is the result of the neglect of their needs and the incomplete practice of the 2013 Curriculum as well as the CLT approach. Thus, I followed up Ayuningtyas‟s (2015) recommendation on investigating the detail information of vocational high school students toward English subject and Arfandhani‟s (2015) suggestion for investigating how the approach is applied in vocational high school. Thus I would like to Anisa Dian Kusumawardani, Abdurrachman Faridi/ EEJ 9 (4) (2019) 509 – 516 511 draw the vocational high school students‟ needs analysis, the practice of the 2013 Curriculum and the CLT Approach, then I would like to draw their alignment and gaps to know what has and has not been achieved. METHOD This study employs qualitative case study. Qualitative research is chosen as this study focuses on the participants‟ perspective, meanings, and their subjective views (Creswell, 2007, p. 38). Furthermore in order to gather information on the issues, multiple data source is needed such as observation, interview, document analysis, and questionnaire. One of vocational high school in Semarang, Central Java is chosen namely SMK N 1 Semarang. The school is one of the favorite vocational high schools in Semarang. It was pointed as one of the pilot schools of the 2013 Curriculum when it was first implemented. There are an English teacher and seventy eight students of vocational high school who participated. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION In this part, the result of the investigation of the study is presented. It includes vocational high school students‟ needs analysis, the implementation of the 2013 Curriculum in English subject and CLT approach. The alignments of and gaps between the needs analysis, the 2013 Curriculum and the practice of CLT approach are presented as well. The Investigation of Vocational High School Students’ Needs Analysis The questionnaire which was filled by the students as well as the interviews of representative students shows the students‟ reflections, experiences, and demands. The students are aware on the importance of English for their future, either so that they can pass the exam or so that they are able to use it properly as well as get more point for their job enrollment, able to perform well during the interview as well as during the training and able to communicate with fellow workers both local and foreign as a lot of them aim to be employed in either national or multination company. Yet, they realized that their English proficiency is still need to be improved. One of the students also mentioned that English is not used in their daily live. He also added that he uses Javanese to communicate with his parents as well as his friends and Bahasa Indonesia when he talks to his teachers or other people he interacted with. This fact is also issued by the expert, who reviewed this study, which causes the slow rate of English acquisition for students. Whereas to acquire English it should be exposed in their daily life (Prihantono, 2016; Rogers, 2014). Thus, students are eager to have more conversation practices in their lessons. They need a lot of space to practice so that they can improve their speaking skill. In addition, as the investigation also reveal that students prefer to learn English which relates to their program. They need practical English which can be used directly during their work such as reading manuals, performing and explaining their work. In this way, a lot of presentation will help them to enhance and improve their English skill. The number of presentation is needed to be maintained as well as to be increased by the teacher (Saritwa, Fitriati & Faridi, 2018). The Implementation of the 2013 Curriculum in English Subject The implementation of the 2013 Curriculum cannot be separated with the regulations which rule it. One of those regulations, Ministry of Education and Culture Regulation No. 22 Year 2016, it contains the guides from the planning until the implementation of the curriculum. In planning the lesson plan, the teacher has followed the organization from the latest version, although there are some sections which still incomplete, such as in learning goals, learning materials, and learning methods. In some lesson plans the teacher has not successfully constructing the ABCD pattern. Meanwhile the learning materials which is supposed to be attached in Anisa Dian Kusumawardani, Abdurrachman Faridi/ EEJ 9 (4) (2019) 509 – 516 512 the lesson plan is not put in the place it should be, in other words, most of the lesson plans only carries the short section of the learning materials. In term of learning methods, the teacher has used the methods proposed namely project-based, problem-based, and discovery learning (Nurwachid, Bharati & Rukmini, 2018; Waluyo, Mujiyanto & Faridi, 2018).which also elaborated into the learning activities planning. In fact, the teacher is still not aware on the difference between those learning methods. This issue leads to the miss between the planning and the classroom activities. Although the steps of opening and closing activity are able to be conducted well by the teacher, it is different for the core activity which mostly having a lot of modification and activities. As also confirmed by the experts that most of the teachers are still having difficulty and lack of understanding toward the 2013 Curriculum, the learning activities is hardly carried as it is expected. During the classroom observations, the teacher used scientific approach limitedly with discovery learning as the method most of it. As the result, learning process which is expected to stimulate Higher-Order Thinking skill is not maximally carried out. Another issue is the assessment aspect which is no longer focusing only on the knowledge aspect also on the behavior as well as on the skill which has been stated in the Government Regulation No. 23 Year 2016. As behavior or attitude assessment is new for the teacher who has been more than thirty years being a teacher, it is quite hard to be conducted by the teacher. It is due to the focus of the teacher during teaching learning process is still on the knowledge aspect as it is the usual assessment which mostly has been done formatively by quizzes, daily test or direct- spoken test. As for the skill assessment, during the classroom observation the teacher prefers conducting speaking test as mostly planned in the lesson plan although it should measure writing skill. However, just like the behavior assessment, the teacher yet has found the proper way to conduct skill assessment as it is not conducted frequently by the teacher. Moreover, the teacher has not fully understood on how to plan and execute the performance assessment well in which the information of the students‟ progress from their planning, practice until their performance do not being recorded. The Classroom Practice of CLT Approach Dealing with the classroom practice of CLT approach, it is shown that a lot of aspects of CLT approach which are not implemented by the teacher but familiarizing English by teacher instruction delivered in English as well as applying trial and error. Yet, the effort to make the students practice and communicate using English is not significant enough (Farista, Bharati & Fitriati, 2018). It is proved by the proportion of students‟ talk and teacher‟s talk in English in which it is dominated by the teacher. This indicates that the learning environment for practicing English for the student is not adequate. The teacher has not built appropriate scene for the students to practice their English both among students as well as with the teacher. Additionally, during the learning process the presence of the authentic media is barely seen. This resonates the findings from the studies conducted by Arfandhari (2015), Huang (2016). It is found that the use of learning media is closed to never as most of times the teacher uses local made books and students worksheet. They barely have listening practices which provide authentic modeling form the native speaker of English. The effect of this issue lays on the students‟ fluency and accuracy. The Alignment of the Needs Analysis, the 2013 Curriculum and the CLT Approach The alignment which occurs between the needs analysis and the 2013 Curriculum lays on the time allotment and the process of teaching learning. According to the students, the duration for learning English in the classroom is sufficient, although it has been reduced into three hours per week. While for the teacher three hours per week is considered as insufficient, it needs more time so that the students are able to master the materials well as well as to get adequate practice. In addition, Anisa Dian Kusumawardani, Abdurrachman Faridi/ EEJ 9 (4) (2019) 509 – 516 513 during the teaching learning process, the teacher has successfully implemented the activity either opening,core orthe closing which are designed by the regulation. The teacher gave chance for the students to ask questions, gather information as well as present their work. Those are the effort of the teacher to make students engage to the learning process, and to show appreciation toward students effort. Furthermore, the needs analysis is aligned with the practice of CLT approach can be seen in the effort from the teacher to familiarize the students with English by speaking in English in some of the occasion during teaching learning process. This effort can be the model for the students to be active practicing to communicate using English, as well as to boost students‟ motivation and courage in their practice. Additionally, the students also have time and chance to try during learning process. How the 2013 Curriculum linked to the CLT approach practice is the way in which both of them promotes active learning which gives the students chances to participate actively during the learning process. Their active participation occurs during the gathering information along with questioning step as well as during the performing their work. As the 2013 Curriculum also pays attention on the skill assessment, the students are also aware on the importance of this matter. Thus, they will try to prepare and perform well. The Gaps between the Needs Analysis, the 2013 Curriculum and the CLT Approach The gap between students‟ needs analysis and the implementation of 2013 Curriculum lay on three aspects, namely focusing only on the knowledge but lack of productive skills, the usage of learning media, and the uncorrelated learning materials with their program of study. The first case is proved by the fact that students are aware on their need of speaking skill yet it is different from the teacher. It might be caused by teacher‟s unawareness on the need as well as the lack of understanding toward the productive skills especially speaking skill. The second case occurs due to teacher‟s lack of preparation. In addition the learning sources belong to the teacher such as textbook from the government lack of authentic materials in which this is in line with the research finding found by Akbar (2016); Handayani (2016), and Nimasari (2016). Those two cases can also be inferred that the teacher still needs more time to adjust her teaching style to the new concept offered by the 2013 Curriculum. Furthermore, a lot of teachers with more than twenty years of teaching experience face a lot of difficulty to shift their teaching paradigm to the newest one. Meanwhile, the third case is caused by the lack of understanding form the government on the needs of vocational high school students. They need more practical English learning materials rather than the theory ones. In term of examples of some of the text genres which are included in the syllabus do not linked to their study program. The slogan which says „practice makes perfect‟ is not applied during the teaching learning process. The lack of practices in communicating using English either between student to teacher and all way round as well as among students is one of the gaps occurred between students‟ needs analysis and the classroom practice of CLT approach. While the CLT approach as well as students‟ desire to have a lot of practice, the reality says the contrary. This issue reflects the finding of the previous studies which were conducted by Astuti (2009), Poorbehzadi and Songhori (2018). In addition, there is not obligation of teacher‟s instruction to the students to always using English during the learning process. Thus, the students have no responsibility to keep on trying to speak in English. As the room for practicing English is limited, students‟ fluency in speaking English cannot be found. According to the finding on the gap between the 2013 Curriculum and the practice of CLT approach it is found that there are a lot of absences between the two. This issue is caused by the lack of knowledge on the CLT approach as stated by the teacher herself. The teacher barely knows the concept of CLT approach as well as how to conduct it in the Anisa Dian Kusumawardani, Abdurrachman Faridi/ EEJ 9 (4) (2019) 509 – 516 514 teaching learning process. However, the teacher has tried to make use of English in some occasions so that the students are able to understand some expressions, although it is not being intensified yet during the learning process. As stated before that the teacher lack of knowledge on CLT approach, the teaching style is still contemporary or using traditional method by separating the four skills. In other words, the four skills are not taught integrated as grammar is taught separately without involving any text or context. In addition, the individual work is still dominating the learning process. The teacher is still reluctant to use group work, whereas it can help the students to interact and practice their English as well as being actively participate during the learning process. Thus, the students mostly interact with the teacher instead of with their friends. Moreover, during the learning process, the teacher dominates it. Instead of being the facilitator, guide or being the advisor during the learning process, the teacher feels more comfortable being the conductor of the class. As the result, it can be said that the implementation of the 2013 Curriculum as well as the practice of CLT approach has not met the qualification. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Firstly, the needs analysis shows that the students are aware on the importance of English for their graduation as well as for their future. They also realize that they are lack of English skill especially in speaking. Meanwhile, the teaching learning activity has accommodated their needs, although it has not shown maximum result of their proficiency. The analysis also discovers the students‟ preference for their learning; it is found that they wish to have more speaking practices as well as more group works. It is also discovered that they prefer to have learning material which relates to their programs. Secondly, the implementation of the 2013 Curriculum in vocational high school more or less has been accordance with the regulation, although some of parts have not met the required yet. In term of lesson plan which is made by the teacher, it is found that some parts are incomplete, for example the learning indicators, learning goals, learning materials, and learning method. Meanwhile, the learning activities as well as the assessment have been design in accordance to the regulation. During the implementation in the classroom, it is shown that the teacher has tried applying scientific approach, although the learning method remains Grammar Translation Method. As for the assessment, the teacher was able to conduct behavior, knowledge as well as skill assessment although the skill assessment is only in the form of speaking performance. The teaching learning approach in the classroom can be said that has not represent CLT approach yet as the soul of it in which familiarizing the student to communicate using English by practicing it has not been done intensively. The communication is still going one way that is from the teacher toward the students. In addition, the lack of authentic material and group work also hinder the implementation of CLT approach. The alignment of the needs analysis and the 2013 Curriculum lays on the sufficient time allotment of the English subject; giving the students time and chances to observe, to ask questions, to gather information and to perform their work. Meanwhile, the alignment of the needs analysis and the classroom practice of CLT approach happened in the fact that the teacher tries to make use of English in every occasion during the learning process as well as giving model in speaking English. Furthermore, the alignment of the 2013 Curriculum and the classroom practice of CLT can be seen through the idea of active learning in which the students participate actively during the learning process, the process trial and error also occurs. The gaps between the needs analysis and the 2013 Curriculum occurs in the lack of productive skill practice such as speaking and writing practice, the use of learning media, and the learning materials. As CLT approach focuses on training the students to be able to master English by using it as the communication Anisa Dian Kusumawardani, Abdurrachman Faridi/ EEJ 9 (4) (2019) 509 – 516 515 tools, the 2013 Curriculum also provide the spot for it; yet it is missing during the practice in the classroom. In addition, the learning media which should be used by the teacher should be able to help the students to have adequate model and example as well as input for their practice. This part is also missing in the reality as authentic media is barely used. The last gap is in the learning materials which are considered un- match to the students‟ program. Based on the explanation and elaboration above, I would like to purpose some suggestions for the next study.After knowing the needs of vocational high school students toward English for their future in which they need to get more practical English, the teacher as well as the school authority should try to meet the students‟ needs by adjusting and expanding the learning materials, methods, as well as the learning activity. Furthermore, as the students are expected to be able to perform active English in their communication, it is needed for the teacher to plan and conduct learning activity which trigger and stimulate them to always practice using English in every occasion. Moreover, the 2013 Curriculum is having a lot of upgraded aspects which a lot of teacher found it difficult to apply such as the HOTS, the scientific approach, the learning methods, and the assessments. Those positive aspects will be meaningless if during the implementation in the school is not as being expected. 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